


What I've Been Searching For

by PanBoleyn



Series: Made Our Way By Finding What Was Real [7]
Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-02-06 21:20:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1872897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Further glimpses into the Air Force!Mike AU, this time from post-2.10, mostly after the boys get together.</p><p>Chapter 2: Two New Years, filled with promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mike gets out of the shower, dries off, and is passing over to his bedroom to dress when he hears a familiar voice. "So you're the famous Harvey Specter."

Oh shit, that’s Anya. It’s far from the first time she or Bianca just popped upstairs to visit him - Anya helps out in the shop on weekends - but he never really thought… Mike almost bolts out to the kitchen, even clad only in boxers as he is, but decides he’d rather overhear what he thinks Anya’s going to say. She’ll find an opportunity to do it regardless; at least if he listens in he’ll know precisely what goes down.

“We’ve met, haven’t we? You’re Mike’s version of Donna or something, Anya?” Harvey’s saying, and Mike shakes his head.

“That would be me. So, since you’re in Mike’s apartment, on a weekend morning, in Mike’s clothes - I’m guessing you guys worked out that mess after all, huh?”

“He told you.”

“Harvey - can I call you Harvey? I’m going to call you that anyway, actually, because Mike’s practically my brother and if you’re dating him you’ll be seeing a lot of me. Harvey, Mike tells me most things. I’ve been away for a couple weeks or I'd have known sooner - as it is, I'm very glad I ran into you now.”

Mike can just picture Harvey’s eyes narrowing, though he suspects Harvey’s kind of amused by Anya as well. “And why is that, Anya?”

“Well, we need to discuss what happens if you hurt Mike.”

Mike winces. Yep, this is exactly what he thought it was going to be, and he wonders how Harvey’s going to respond. His voice, when he answers her, no longer has that hint of amusement in it, so not all that well. “I think Mike’s a grown man who can handle himself, don’t you?”

“Of course, but that isn’t the point,” Anya says, and the teasing is gone from her voice too. “The point is, he’s my best friend, and if you break his heart I will kick your rich boy ass, and don’t think I can’t.”

“I’m not really fond of threats.”

Oh God. It’s probably time that Mike interrupts, so he tugs his shirt over his head and walks out to the kitchen. “Anya, already? Come on, I at least gave Bianca a month, and I saw her every day.”

Anya shrugs, hopping off the counter where she’d been perched. “Well, I saw an opportunity and I took it. I actually came up to let you know that Bianca’s gonna be hosting another open mic thing, if you wanted to not be here.”

Mike groans. Last time Bianca decided to host an open mic night, he’d been trying to work through a mountain of paperwork, and trying to do that didn’t work so well when there was mild insanity going on a floor below. “Christ. When?”

“Two weeks from Friday. Well, warning and threat taken care of, I’ll go back to my wife now.” Anya turns a sharp smile on Harvey. “Nice to see you again, Harvey.”

Harvey watches her go, then turns to Mike. “Do she and her wife normally burst through that door whenever they want? I thought it was a closet or something.”

Mike rubs his temples, dropping into the chair next to Harvey’s. “Well, they own the building, so… Anya does it more than Bianca. Though neither of them do it too often. Sorry about her.”

“It’s fine. She said you’re like her brother; I know how that goes. And you did it to her, you said, so she was probably paying you back too.”

“Does that mean your brother might threaten me?” Mike winces after he says it; too much, too fast. Harvey, though, just shrugs, finishing his mug of coffee.

“Actually, he’s curious and wants to meet you - he’s the one who got me to come over here two weeks ago in the first place.”

“Oh yeah? I owe him a thank-you, then.”

“We both do but… I think we can save that for later, don’t you? It is Saturday, and both of us with a lighter than usual workload… There’s no rush to sending Marc a fruit basket, and I can definitely think of better ways to spend our time, can’t you?”

 **  
**Mike takes one look at the way Harvey’s smirking at him, and decides that, yeah, that kind of thing can wait for later.


	2. Auld Lang Syne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two New Years, both filled with promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some reference to PTSD triggered by the sound of fireworks here, if that's a problem for anyone.

_Surprisingly, Mike can still watch fireworks. He just uses sound-canceling headphones so he doesn’t have to hear the explosions. Earplugs would probably work as well, but Mike prefers music to silence. So, armed with headphones and iPod, he celebrates moving from crutches to a cane and the increased mobility he now has by going with his housemates to watch Boston’s fireworks display._

__

_Connor, Jules, and Isabel use the cold air as an excuse to cuddle close, and Mike grins when he sees Jaime snapping a photo. She catches his eye and winks; they both know she’ll be using the photo as a reference so she can paint their lovebird trio caught under multicolored lights._

__

_Mike turns his gaze back to the fireworks, head tilted back to watch. He tries not to shiver too much; he hasn’t quite yet adjusted to a New England winter after so long in the Middle East. Even so, he’s mostly relaxed as he watches, toying with his iPod. It’s 2007, it’s a new year, and he -_

__

_He’s got a fucked up leg, hates cars even more, and can’t watch fireworks without playing music because the sound of the explosions makes him run for cover, sends him right into flashbacks. He’s been discharged from the Air Force just when he was beginning to think that maybe he honestly wouldn’t leave, would make a full career of it._

__

_But he can still watch the fireworks, he reminds himself. He’s got friends, his housemates here, Anya and Bianca out in California. He’s got Trevor, to an extent. He has no family but he’s not alone. He’s in his first year at Harvard Law, top of his class. He has a future._

__

_It’s a new year._

__

_The next morning, Mike is on Connor duty - which is to say, keeping Connor out of the kitchen. For all he can handle dangerous chemicals with ease, Connor can cause a minor housefire with a toaster and a piece of bread. Isabel covered for the first part of the morning while Mike made his mother’s French toast - old tradition, every holiday she made her secret recipe French toast, and since they went with Jules’ family tradition for Christmas morning and no one was here for Thanksgiving this is the first chance Mike’s had to do it since his Academy days._

__

_But now Isabel’s taken the kitchen over to make pork sandwiches and French fries. Jaime rolls her eyes and teases her cousin, saying technically it should be baked potatoes, but Isabel makes great French fries so no one’s really complaining. Jules had a brainwave for her novel and now is busily typing away, and Jaime is laughing at all of them while she sketches._

__

_So Mike and Connor end up playing Resident Evil, because apparently zombie games on New Year’s is a Connor Turner tradition. Seeing as he’s working toward a biochemistry degree and loves all things zombie, Mike wonders sometimes if the world should worry._

__

_After they finish watching the parade streaming online - it’s the Mummers’ parade in Philadelphia, not the New York one Mike knows, because Isabel won the coin toss with him to pick - Jaime puts on RENT. That’s yet another tradition from the Tierney-D’Amico cousins’ vast hoard, and Connor knows better than to argue, Mike’s sick of getting trounced at Resident Evil, and Jules is too busy writing to notice._

__

_So they watch RENT - Jules snaps out of her writing daze during ‘Over the Moon’, steals the remote, and mutes the TV till it’s over - and a little later eat pork sandwiches while watching Fellowship of the Ring. Connor’s choice, and Mike won’t complain._

__

_Mike checks his Harvard e-mail to find that there’s a party tonight with alumni, listed as a good networking event. He doesn’t go, not quite up to the hours on his feet that networking will probably involve. (Also, he doesn’t have a tux.) But Isabel sends him out with extra sandwiches when he decides to go for the walk that his doctor says will help his leg get more limber, because Harold and Maria did and she’s sure the food was crap. Jaime’s left by this time to go to some art student party, and Mike knows that what’s really happening is he’s being shooed out to give the other three ‘quality time’._

__

_As long as no one’s shirt ends up on the light fixture again, he’s happy to give them the place for an hour or two. That incident almost sparked a house fire, but then it was Connor’s shirt. Damn thing picked up his tendencies somehow, maybe._

__

_When he finds them, Harold says that the food was indeed awful and all but inhales his sandwich. Maria says next to none of the firms represented showed any potential at all. They both stop long enough to congratulate him on the move from crutches to cane, though, before they head for Harold’s one-room apartment. It’s the closest to campus, and it’s cold._

__

_On the way there, they chat about the rumors surrounding Ty Lane, the professor for the international law class they’ll all be taking when the spring semester starts in a few weeks. Harold’s in the middle of a story he’s heard when Mike hears someone laughing. It’s vaguely familar, but he can’t place it. Things he hears are harder than things he sees. Glancing over his shoulder he sees a man with slicked back hair and a woman with long dark curls getting into a car. Or trying to anyway; they seem to be having some trouble keeping their hands to themselves long enough to manage it._

__

_He doesn’t think he knows them, though judging by the fancy clothes they’re probably alums who went to the party. Though why does the guy’s laughter sound familiar? He has a flash of a dark nightclub, but pushes the thought to the back of his mind, whistling softly and tilting his head toward the couple when Harold and Maria look at him._

__

_“Looks like the party was fun for some people,” he quips. Harold snickers, Maria rolls her eyes, and Mike grins wickedly._

__

_“Anyway. You were saying, Harold?”_

__

_All in all, 2007’s off to a decent start._

\---

December 31, 2012 finds Mike in the same place December 31, 2011 did; at the Pearson Hardman holiday party. Only now, as of two months ago, it’s Pearson Specter, after spending several months as just Pearson. Still, the party’s at the same fancy Midtown location, the food is catered by the same people, and it’s the same glittery mingle of clients and employees.

The tux is new, though, made for him rather than adjusted and off the rack. Harvey’s idea, and he’d dragged Mike along when he went to Rene, his tailor. Rene, Mike had discovered, was both impressive and terrifying. But his work is amazing - which Mike had long known, because of seeing Harvey on a daily basis. But then, he’s not very objective when looking at Harvey.

Which is the other huge change from last year, of course. Last year, Mike dragged Jaime along to the party, since she was in New York for a friend’s gallery showing, and he didn’t have anyone he wanted to ask. This year…

“So, if we’re both invited, but we’re each other’s dates, who’s the plus one?” Mike asks as they walk in, and Harvey gives him a deeply unimpressed look. Mike just beams back at him, eyes wide and innocent. Harvey huffs, rolling his eyes, and they split up not long after.

The thing about the firm holiday party is it’s not really that much of a party, to Mike’s way of thinking. People dress up and rub elbows and eat pretentious food. Some of it’s all right, like the shrimp, and of course the sushi. Though Rachel, here with a guy named Brandon, says she’s definitely had better sushi and Mike, who’s gone out to foodie lunches with her several times by now, has no trouble believing that. Brandon is a graphic artist, but more importantly is six foot four, broad shouldered, and intimidating, and it is hilarious to watch Kyle and Gregory steer clear when they waste far too much time trying to flirt with Rachel on company time. Hilarious because after five minutes talking to him it’s clear Brandon is a big - very big - teddy bear, and in all honesty Mike’s always known Rachel is the one to be terrified of anyway.

So ok, maybe there’s a little entertainment from the floor show, and of course Ethan Masters his here with his parents. Mike spends a good forty-five minutes talking to them and other clients who run in their specific circle of New York elites. Most of them are a little more real, and several thank him and Ethan for their service after noting Mike’s Air Force pin - and he never, never knows what to do with that when he’s alive and others aren’t, but he appreciates the sentiment.

And there’s the dancing.

Last year, Mike didn’t have his cane, but Jaime still didn’t think it was a good idea for him to dance and he agreed. He’d had a bad few days, his leg was stiffer than usual, and so he’d watched. This year, he has the cane, bright green as usual - which has earned him a few scandalized glances, including one from Harvey who likes his “Hulk cane” usually but really thinks he should have gone with something less wacky for the company party. But of course the looks are the whole reason he likes it so much. That and the memory of the mischief in Trevor’s eyes when he gave it to him, now that the memory warms him more than it hurts.

And with it, his leg is a lot less uncomfortable than it usually is. Which is good, considering.

Harvey, Mike knows, likes to dance, and he’s good at it. Last year, he danced with a bunch of people; clients and their wives, Jessica at one point, and he and Donna make excellent partners who show off just a little. This year the show-off role seems to be going to Louis and Sheila Sazs, but they’re so ridiculously infatuated that people forgive them. Just like they forgave Donna and Harvey - in their case, because they were just that damn good.

Which is why Mike enlisted Donna to help him practice for his little plan, and so she winks at him when he sidles up, cane not in hand, to where she and Harvey have just stepped off the dance floor. “Mind if I steal him, just for one song?” he asks Donna instead of Harvey, for a little added mischief.

Donna laughs and goes in search of some poor fool who doesn’t know what’s about to hit him, and Mike grins at Harvey, holding out a hand. “May I have this dance?”

Harvey’s giving him that little smile that’s one of his real smiles, the ones that make his eyes light up, but there’s still a hint of worry when he says, “You sure?”

It’s not about coming out - they’ve done that, not dramatically, but simply by not hiding that they’re together - but about Mike’s leg, and he nods. “I’m sure. Donna’s been helping me practice.” He keeps holding out his hand, and finally Harvey takes it. “Though you should probably lead, I’m still no expert,” Mike adds as they walk back out to the floor.

Luckily, it’s an easy, slow song, and while Mike knows they aren’t nearly as good a sight as Harvey usually is with a properly able-bodied partner, for once he doesn’t care. Because that little smile has turned into the grin that makes the corners of Harvey’s eyes crinkle, and he likes that best of all the real smiles his partner has. So he forgets that he fumbles the steps a little, forgets everything except the two of them and, distantly, the music.

“So why’d you do this?” Harvey murmurs in his ear, and Mike shrugs.

“You love dancing. No surprise, with how much you love music, but I saw that last year and, well… We can, now and then. Seemed like a good first run at it.”

“First run?”

“Well, I don’t intend on dancing with anyone else, so…”

Harvey tugs him a little closer than the dance strictly calls for, lips brushing the hinge of Mike’s jaw before pulling back. “Good.”

They don’t stay much longer; the venue has a great indoor view for fireworks, or so Mike was told, but it’s a view where you can still hear them, and so he didn’t stay long enough to find out last year. Even after all this time, the sound of explosions gets to him. He’s better; they don’t force him into full flashback mode or make him dive for cover, but they leave him shaky and tense, and with the taste of smoke in the back of his throat.

“The view’s better from my condo, and you won’t hear a thing.” Harvey tells him in the cab, and Mike nods. He spends a lot of time at Harvey’s anymore, though Harvey is at his often enough as well. Joint cohabitation, Anya called it once, laughing, and that’s true enough, their books and movies and clothes getting mixed on their shelves and in their closets. But Harvey’s place is closer, and of course there’s the promised view.

By the time midnight strikes, the ball dropping on the TV, Mike and Harvey are in more comfortable clothes, stretched out on the couch with Mike on top, head on Harvey’s chest. They can’t really reverse that because of Mike’s leg, and sometimes Mike wishes they could. But this is good tonight, lazy wandering hands and Harvey’s heartbeat under his ear, lights dimmed so they can see the fireworks better. See and not hear, because Harvey’s condo is soundproofed so all they hear is the low music he switched on as soon as the ball officially dropped and they turned the TV off. So Mike can just enjoy the sight, relaxed and easy, no fear at all.

Soon, they’ll get up and go to bed, ring in 2013 with their own kind of fireworks, and tomorrow Mike will make his mother’s French toast just like he did on Christmas morning. Marc and his wife Carly will show up halfway through breakfast with their ten-month-old daughter Ellie. Ellie will finally make that last move from scooting to crawling on the living room floor, and the giddy parents will take a ton of pictures. (And if an also giddy uncle and almost-uncle take a few too, well… It’s only fair.) And maybe Mike and Harvey will dance again, to show off a little.

But for now it’s just the two of them, soft music, and lights filling the sky, washing them in rainbow colors, and Mike, tilting his head to look at Harvey’s face, thinks that 2013 might be one of his best years yet.

 


End file.
